


Spaces Otherwise Filled

by damedeleslac



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Drowning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 03:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3342740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damedeleslac/pseuds/damedeleslac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan falls...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spaces Otherwise Filled

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own this, really!

Spaces Otherwise Filled.

 

Joan falls.

It's raining; been raining most of the week, the bridge is slippery and despite the hands reaching for her, she falls.

Oh-so far and hardly any distance at all.

The water coming up over her head as the cold - the freezing, shocking cold - of it makes her gasp.

Joan doesn't have time to scream.

Sherlock; lunging over the side of the bridge, in time for his fingers to brush against Joan's, screams enough for the both of them.

The rushing water, the river, is cold and dark and fast. It pushes her down and pulls at her clothes.

It fills her lungs.

And for the first time, since meeting Sherlock, there's knowledge in her head that Joan wishes wasn't there. It’s one thing to read about drowning, to see it have happened to other people and something else entirely, to experience it firsthand.

 

:::

 

Bell pulls Sherlock away from the bridge, doesn’t stop until they’re far enough away that it and the river aren’t the only thing to look at.

There are some things he will never forget.

His first body.

Every person he’s had to shoot.

Getting shot.

Sherlock screaming for Joan.

The Riechenbach Bridge in the rain.

And the swirl of dark water and light foam as Joan disappeared under it.

 

:::

 

Sherlock almost goes over the edge of the bridge, reaching for Joan.

He’d just needed to be a few seconds faster, to have longer arms, something, anything that meant he could have caught her and held on (and then they’d probably both be in the water).

He hates to use the phrase, but his memories are a bit of a blur.

There might have been someone else on the bridge; it might only have been Joan.

But, then how did she go over the edge? Did the other person push her? Was it somehow, in some way, an accident?

None of these questions have answers, just help to fill the spaces, otherwise filled by anguish and grief

 

:::

 

The local Sheriff; a man Bell has had to soothe the ruffled feathers of at least once a day since Sherlock and Joan had arrived to ask questions, isn’t particularly hopeful.

Or even helpful, in Bell’s opinion.

People have gone over the Reichenbach Bridge before.

Not all the bodies had been recovered, and the ones that had been, were found at the next town downstream, the only point where the river is wide and shallow and slow.

Bell wants to scream at the man for simply going through the motions.

 

:::

 

It had started to rain again, the thick foggy kind that made it hard to see a hand in front of your face.

Sherlock stared out at it, almost absently, distractedly, tapping Morse code letters against the window sill.

“She saw something that I didn’t.” He said, breathe misting on the window pane, “I was distracted and she was faster, even in those ridiculous shoes.”

The only ridiculous things Bell remembered of the past week had been Sherlock’s jumpers.

“Joan ran and I hit stationary objects with a stick. I should have gone over that bridge, not her.” 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 


End file.
